In the modern era people have become accustomed to having their call answered by an automated IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Menu when they call any large organisation that uses a call centre to answer their inbound calls. The reason why such organisations implement and use this type technology, is to obtain significant improvements in their operational efficiency by having the caller provide information, such as the nature of their query, before their call is connected to a call centre agent. If a caller is able to navigate through a series of options in order to specify the reason for their call, it will save a considerable amount of time when compared to the amount of time it would take a call centre agent to do the same thing live on the call. More recently, this concept has been taken a step further through the introduction of speech recognition to further improve operational efficiency by increasing the amount of information that can be collected before a call is connected. Read more
A Codec is a technical term for the following variations, which essentially mean the same thing: compression - decompression / compressor - decompressor / Code Decode. In practice the compression and decompression is done by a computer program for the purpose of transmitting data over a data connection and allows them to be translated when they reach their destination. Within the telecommunications industry, the data transmitted through the Codec would be the packets of data that make up a call. Read more
The Telephone Preference Service, or TPS, is an 'opt-out' register which prevents individuals from receiving unsolicited marketing calls. It's a free and extremely useful service used by a huge number of people - an estimated 17 million - to avoid these inconvenient calls, even being put to use by companies. This is thanks to the fact that the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS) was set up in June 2004, giving corporate businesses and organisations the chance to opt-out of being on the receiving end of unsolicited market calls. Also the legal definition of 'individual' includes SoleTraders and Partnerships (excluding Scotland), and so these have had the opportunity to register onto the TPS since May 1999. That is when the Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations1999 came into action, allowing people to register to the list. The British direct marketing industry administers the list on behalf of Ofcom. Read more
The Information Commissioner's Office is the UK's independent authority, which has been set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, in order to promote openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals. With particular regards to the ICO's role in call centre regulation, the ICO are responsible for enforcing regulation in respect of marketing calls through the telephone preference service. Read more
A SIP Trunk is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service which streams media based on the Session Initiation Protocol. SIP is often used to control voice and video calls or other communication sessions over Internet Protocol. The protocol can be used to both create and terminate sessions, or modify them whether they be unicast or multicast or over one or several media streams. Instant messaging and online games also use SIP. Read more
A virtual call centre is a call centre that operates with all of the organisation's employees are geographically dispersed instead of working from one centralised location. This is typically done through employees working from home, or from many small locations. Below is a list of 10 things that should be considered when setting up a virtual call centre. Read more
TPS is an abbreviation of Telephone Preference Service, which is a service that was implemented in an attempt to allow individuals and businesses to register their request not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing calls. Individuals should register to the TPS, whilst businesses should register to corporate TPS. The TPS and CTPS are free services, and once registered, an individual or business should expect to not receive unsolicited calls within 28 days. Read more
The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a free service that allows businesses to register their preference not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing calls. The TPS regulations are enforced by the Information Commissioners Office, who have the power to enforce financial penalties of up to £500,000. In order to safeguard your operation from fines such as this, you should utilise a service such as TPS Compliant from Nexbridge, which works by performing a real time look up against the TPS database to ensure that the number being dialled isn't TPS registered. If the dialled number is TPS registered, then the service will automatically block the call from being made. Read more
